The promise of liberalizing reforms, however, remains elusive, such that much more remains the same despite the massive turnover of politicians, parties, and coalitions. Why are fundamental changes seemingly impossible in Malaysia? writes Morris Chan
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Even a casual observer of Malaysia cannot fail to notice how its landscape of political contestation has changed—and is still changing—in dramatic ways unseen in previous decades. Previously ruled by a dominant coalition, Malaysia witnessed the relegation of the said coalition in two election cycles, with other forces promoted to the forefront of politics. The promise of liberalizing reforms, however, remains elusive, such that much more remains the same despite the massive turnover of politicians, parties, and coalitions. Why are fundamental changes seemingly impossible in Malaysia?
This blog post, based on my recent presentation at the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS) conference this past July, addresses this puzzle by suggesting that the former ruling coalition created an ethnic institutional order that now outlives the regime itself, while the recent political turnovers introduced an avowed opponent of the order to power. Ketuanan Melayu (Malay supremacy), originally a mere constitutional statement, evolved over the period of almost half a century into an institutional order that allocates resources and opportunities through ethnic criteria. The durability of this order, rather than the longevity of its creator, underpins the lack of fundamental policy and ideological changes.
From “Special Position” to Institutional Order
The Malay Peninsula before World War II represented a near perfect example of J.S. Furnivall’s “plural society,” in which various communal groups lived side-by-side, had everyday interactions, but were of separate faiths, cultures, languages, and traditions. Of its two largest ethnicities, the Malays lived a predominantly self-sufficient peasant life, with their elites enjoying a near monopoly on civil service and security forces opportunities under British command. The Chinese, by contrast, were mostly urban wage workers and petty merchants, with the richest amongst them controlling most of the capital stocks and business opportunities outside Western foreigners’ hands. Seeking to represent the entire Malay ethnic group, the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) had the tall task of making the constitutional promise of Malays’ “special position” into reality upon independence in 1957. Controlling the state apparatus meant that UMNO first sought to realize this objective by using state resources to co-opt Malay local power brokers, but the overall paucity of resources available, result of the continued non-Malay control over the post-independence economy, limited the extent to which this approach was effective for the Malay ethnic majority.
The mismatch between rhetoric and reality ended with the exogenous event of the 1969 ethnic riots, which led to the suspension of parliamentary rule for two years plus the long-term proscription of civil and political freedoms. The crisis afforded UMNO elites an opportunity to expand state intervention in the economy and the society at large, with a corresponding rise in state capacity to substantiate the expansion. At the time, UMNO elites found themselves sandwiched between the zero-sum conflict between Malay demands for radical redistribution and Malay-only rule and non-Malay calls for explicit equity in civil and political participation. They also had to operate within an economy dominated by foreign interests but with an ascendant Malaysian Chinese capital sector. The ethnic institutional order, through which the regime assumed the role of final arbiter of distributive allocations, represented a purported solution to the trilemma of satisfying the demands of the Malay radicals, non-Malay forces, and capital.
While this framework made allocations based on ethnic criteria, it became an institutional order because it bound the participating actors into subscribing to Ketuanan Melayu, however unwilling they might have been before May 1969. Political actors’ rationales to be part of this arrangement varied, while their support for the Malay ethnic objective was the same. The Malay radicals gained political entry; the non-Malays obtained guaranteed political presence; the capital sector avoided nationalization without compensation. The ruling elites, meanwhile, orchestrated the penetration of state power into the private sector. For everyone involved, this institutional order, while not delivering the best possible outcome, certainly allowed for the avoidance of worse outcomes.
Contesting the Order, Resulting in Gridlock
While UMNO elites co-opted as many political forces as possible, the Democratic Action Party (DAP), with its almost exclusively non-Malay membership and support base, stood outside the institutional order. No matter how the DAP sought to portray itself as cross-ethnic, its non-Malay identity meant that its pre-2018 relationship with UMNO was undoubtedly zero-sum, such that any specter of the DAP in power would engender a Malay supremacist reaction in and out of UMNO.
The defeat of the UMNO-led regime in 2018 after 61 years, therefore, created a situation that witnessed the extant ethnic order under attack, as the DAP entered government and assumed the critical finance portfolio in the cabinet. As noted above, the Malay supremacist ethnic institutional order functioned because Malay elites, especially UMNO leaders, assumed paramountcy over the nation’s distribution of both economic resources and civil and political opportunities. The loss of this form of paramount control inspired fear among these elites that the DAP might now construct an opposite ethnic order premised upon its political platform of inter-ethnic equality. Armed with the ministerial portfolio presiding over the economy, the DAP had a reasonable prospect of serving as the new final arbiter of distributive allocations, with spillover effects beyond the economy.
The observable implication of the above proposition, therefore, would suggest political mobilization in ethnic terms, either overt or as ‘dog whistle’ only, on issues not necessarily driven by ethnicity per se. For example, there was an attempt during the 2018-2020 government to abolish the death penalty, but it drew vociferous opposition from a Malay far-right fringe group. Why would a previously non-ethnic issue attract the ethnic far right? This saga shows how the Malay supremacist ethnic order still determined the scope by which non-Malays could participate in Malaysian political life. The regime might have fallen, but the order and the specter of its opponent remained. The attitude that “it is not you the non-Malays’ business to speak up” said it all. In yet another example, when the government proposed introducing basic Malay calligraphy art into school curriculum, the seniormost DAP elite’s attempt to endorse this proposal resulted in a major backlash from the party’s core Chinese supporters. The ethnic order framework suggests that many Malaysian Chinese, especially the educators, accepted Malay supremacy in exchange for the independence of their own non-Malay educational institutions. The proposal and DAP’s shift upended this bargain.
Conclusion
There was, is, and will be no doubt at all as to the centrality of the ethnic variable, at least for the foreseeable future. The modus operandi, however, deserves serious discussion in the scholarly attempts to tease out factors leading to Malaysia’s lack of fundamental liberalizing changes, in contrast with other cases of successful political transition. The ethnic institutional order approach suggests a framework to explain not only regime longevity, but also the durability of the political order and its consequences for the prospects of genuine change.
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*The LSE Southeast Asia Centre PhD Research Support Fund supported Morris to attend the European Association for Southeast Asian Studies (EuroSEAS) conference in July 2024.
* Banner photo by Aaron Lee on Unsplash
*The views expressed in the blog are those of the author alone. They do not reflect the position of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre, nor that of the London School of Economics and Political Science.
